Workers Who Help Process Obama's Paycheck Face Termination

Sheba and Troy Marshall are shown in this file photo. Marshall said he was suspended from DFAS in Cleveland, Ohio after 17 years because of $6,000 he owes on credit card and hospital bills.

Courtesy Troy Marshall

Employees at a government agency in Cleveland which processes President Barack Obama's paycheck risk losing their jobs because they have failed credit report checks, according to Troy Marshall, a union leader at the Cleveland office of Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS).

He says tighter security clearance rules introduced by the Pentagon five years ago have cost 25 DFAS Cleveland workers their jobs and threaten another 42. The rules are unfair, he says, because these employees don't handle classified information and are struggling to dig out of debt due to the economic crisis.

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Tough Economy to Blame

"We've had people who have tried to get their debt consolidated […] but in this economy you can't get loans," says Marshall, who also works as a management assistant at DFAS and who claims he was suspended after 17 years because of $6,000 he owes on credit card and hospital bills.

Marshall says he has diabetes and heart disease; his wife has leukemia. "Cleveland is a very depressed area, it's not like you can get another job," he says.

Tom LaRock, a DFAS spokesman, said he could not immediately comment on particular employees. But he confirmed that DFAS Cleveland processes Obama's paycheck and that DFAS staff must have their credit checked as part of a wider background screening they must pass in order to stay employed.

The Department of Defense, which oversees DFAS, has conducted background checks for decades, but it was only in 2005 that DFAS' entire staff fell into the "sensitive" clearance category and became subject to comprehensive background checks.

"All DFAS positions are considered sensitive because our employees have access to privacy act information such as names, social security numbers and bank account numbers," says LaRock, explaining that DFAS' main task is to pay military personnel and contractors. Everyone at DFAS, including himself, submits to a background check that covers everything from U.S. allegiance to drug use. "The credit check is just a portion of it."

Marshall, however, argues that DFAS is making decisions based simply on the credit score. He says workers who failed the credit portion began receiving termination letters in 2007, and since then, 25 have been either fired or forced into early retirement. Another 20 have been suspended, and the rest are waiting for their fate to be decided, he says.

The White House would not comment.

Lawmakers Angry

"This thing is nonsense because you can't punish people for having bad credit," he told ABC News.com. "DFAS is being very tough on their humble employees while at the same time the people on Wall Street who committed financial misdeeds […] are getting bonuses."

A New Trend

"Clearly we want to make sure that people who work in sensitive positions have clearances, but to say that someone is a risk to national security solely because of their credit is a stretch," she told ABC News.com.